Katharina Grosse: Painting with Color | ART21 "Exclusive"

[Katharina Grosse: Painting with Color]

[Katharina Grosse Studio, Berlin, Germany]

I got to write this poem down here on my wrist--

on my arm.

Stilton cheese.

I'm going to make a Christmas card for my
friends.

One side of the card is going to be a photograph
of a poem that I really like.

I've written it down on paper,

and I think maybe it's better on my skin.

When I started painting, I stopped reading.

In school, I loved to learn languages and
read things,

and I really stopped that at the moment that
I started painting.

And I didn't know why.

It took me a little while to understand why
I did it.

It's a poem by an Austrian poet,

and his name is Ernst Jandl,

and he's made a lot of really fantastic poems
that are just sound, and...

yeah, they're super fascinating.

The linguistic structure urges you towards
a certain order system

where things follow one another, which is
very linear.

And I realize that painting does not have
a linear structure;

but the synchronicity in painting is super
compelling for your thought process.

[sound of the camera phone's shutter clicking]

Okay, we have to do it again.

It's very rare that you read something profound
and fundamental on color.

Modern critics write about the concept
on what you can see

or what is being dealt with politically or
socially;

but, painting being discussed in the realm
of color is never happening.

Interestingly enough, color is an element
in painting that has always been discussed

from the 17th Century on--in the big academy
in Paris or wherever--

as the female, less stable, less clear, and
not so intelligent element of painting,

whereas the concept--the line, the drawing--

is more the male, the clear, the progressive,
and intelligent part of the artwork.

I think that I am dealing with this heritage
in an interesting way,

because color is such a very very important
spatial feature in my work,

in relationship to the crystallized and built
and materialized world

that is part of what I do when I paint in
space.

I like this anarchic potential of color.

I see it very clearly that color is actually
taking away the boundary of the object.

So there is no subject-object relationship
anymore.

And I think that's maybe what color has the
potential to make us think.

[Johann König Gallery, Berlin, Germany]

It's the first time I'm showing works on paper
in a show.

When I came back from my annual surfing holiday,
[LAUGHS]

I started with works on paper and I kept going.

And I found it very interesting

and I could develop a lot of things very fast.

All the different actions go together on one
surface,

so it's a little bit like violence in a movie,

which kind of accelerates time and compresses time.

So, shortening the process of thinking and
acting.

Also, it's without resistance to work on these
small formats

as opposed to the large pieces where the material
resistance is very strong

and makes the painting less fluid and mobile.

What I'm doing with my work is to kind of
grasp some of those

fast thoughts that run through my brain,

and maybe painting is one of the ways to actually

make those visible and understandable for myself.